The statistical data from World Health Organization (WHO) shows that, about 10 million people occur cancer and 7 million die, which makes cancer become the second leading cause of death around the world, second only to cardiovascular disease. Currently, clinically used chemotherapeutics mainly are cytotoxic medications, which killing cancer cells as well as normal cells. Although significant developments have been obtained in some leukocythemia diseases for which virulence gene is single, the effect of chemotherapeutics are limited and its side effects are obvious. And therefore, it has been always interested in developing an anti-cancer prodrug from natural animals or plants with low toxicity, high potency, definitive target and new mechanism for scientists and researchers domestic as well as abroad.
It has been confirmed through thousand years of medical practices in Chinese medicine, there is a growing number of people who recognize and utilize the Chinese medicine worldwide. Recently, there has been great progress in the research for anti-cancer active ingredients from Chinese medicine, and has found some ingredients that can suppress or kill tumor cells.
Because there is a great variety of Chinese medicine and its active ingredients are complex, however, our knowledge about these anti-cancer active ingredients is still very little. And therefore, there is a continued need to separate from Chinese medicine and study those active ingredients effective for cancer, in seeking of a low-toxicity, anti-drug resistance active ingredient which can suppress and kill tumor cells through multi-targets or multi-pathways.